Ten Years. One question I am still asking.

On May 29 I celebrated ten years since my first article was published.

It was called “What Losing All Control Taught me about Motherhood.”

Publishing that article was my first step out of hiding. What began as an act of daring to be visible, quickly became an act of self-revelation.​

At the time, I thought I was writing about parenting.

Looking back, I see that it was the beginning of questioning what love is.

Ten years ago my three daughters were teenagers, becoming their own people.

Not only did they no longer need me in the same way, they began making choices I did not understand.

They surprised me.
They disappointed me.
They questioned me.
They suffered in ways I couldn’t prevent.

I was being asked to face the painful truth that my love did not give me control.

Not over the girls or their destinies, nor over my own feelings and capacity.

Love is the risk we take to face helplessness and dare to engage anyway.

In a surprisingly synchronistic way, I am now again under the same roof with two of my daughters.

Being together again as a family this week, I am amazed to observe how quickly my nervous system reorganizes itself around everyone’s needs.

How automatic it is that I become so attuned to their needs and preferences that I stop hearing my own (or treat them as less important.)

Mother mode is astonishingly primal.
It took over my responses before I had a moment to choose.

So when an unexpectedly difficult conversation with one of my daughters happened the other night, it caught me off guard.

Here I was trying to be the perfect mom, and it was still “not enough.”

The following morning I woke up thinking of my own mother.

And about mothers everywhere.

How little room there is in our culture for mothers to be ordinary human beings.

Women with their own wounds, needs, blind spots, histories, limitations.

Women to whom very little relational skill was modeled.

Women who are often misunderstood, because everyone forgets (including ourselves) that we are imperfect, that we do not know everything and that we make mistakes.

I am reminded how important it is to remain myself - whether I am a mother, a wife, a mentor or anything else.

What others receive from me is filtered through their own needs and wounds. That is rarely within my control.

If I am not to collapse under the difference between what I believe I give and what they are capable of receiving, means I need to remain steady in myself.

To remember that my inner child does not grow up and leave home. It needs me always.

And the only way I can remain steady through the inevitable ups and downs of relationships is by staying true to myself and anchored in myself.

This is really what these last ten years of writing and self-expression were all about:

It is not to care less about others.

It is how to stay myself while staying close and connected to people I love.

So, ten years after my first published article, I no longer think it was about motherhood.

I think it was the beginning of my life-long inquiry:

How do we love others deeply without abandoning ourselves?

And that is why I created the Safe to Be Me Retreat.

Not to help people become better versions of themselves.

But to help them discover who they are beneath the roles, obligations, expectations, and patterns of self-abandonment they have learned in order to belong.

A space to reconnect with your body.
Your truth.
Your needs.
Your voice.
Your grief.

And to practice staying connected to others without leaving yourself behind.

​Safe to Be Me Retreat​
October 17–22, 2026
Riviera Maya, Mexico

You can find all information here.

Warmly,

Galina